About the Bike Lab

The Bike Lab is an ongoing project of Totally Doable Consulting, using the bicycle as a tool to better understand the physical layout and divisions of urban areas. I examine the social meaning of the bicycle in the city, and the relationship of cycling advocacy to culture, race and ethnicity.

I encourage advocates to understand that top-down infrastructural planning carries risks of replicating the social exclusions of the freeway era, and I challenge city planners to foreground equity in their community engagement processes.

The Bike Lab began as a field research project which formed part of my thesis work in the Urban Studies program at UC Berkeley. My current interests are in the causal relationships between cycling advocacy, bike facilities, utility cycling rates, and neighborhood change.

Having completed the program, I continue to research these areas, with a particular focus on the dynamics of cycling infrastructure projects in disadvantaged communities, and the different cultural relationships those communities have to the bicycle.

The project’s name, and some of its premises, were inspired by Steve Zavestoski (University of San Francisco), co-editor of “Incomplete Streets.” It is also heavily influenced by the work of the bicicultures movement led by authors such as Adonia Lugo, Melody Hoffman, and John Stehlin.

Support

The Bike Lab’s work was supported by the Judith Lee Stronach Travel Award, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.

4 days ago
It is sad, but unsurprising, that @Lyndab08 and other women of color are marginalized at #NACTO19. Streets advocacy has a lot of work to do on incorporating those with different perspectives, values, and experiences. I'm putting in my application for @untokening Durham. https://t.co/kjVSKScWsi

5 days ago
"It’s time for us to figure out how to show up differently, in community spaces, and learn new ways of talking about our work. We have to be willing to go outside our comfort zones to be with the people we say we want to help." https://t.co/oonMjlt4mS